2007 - Two Caravans (27 page)

“I thought you wanted to stay in London.”

“Don’t you want me to come?”

He shrugs. “You can come if you like.”

“But maybe we could stay in London for a while, to earn some money. Then we can go and look at this Sheffield.”

What’s the matter with you, Andriy Palenko? You’re a man, aren’t you? Just say no.

The woman who ran the restaurant looked Andriy and me up and down. She had black hair scraped back from her forehead in a ponytail, a white powdered face, and red-red lips. Why did she put all that make-up on? It looked dire. She tapped on her teeth with a red fingernail. “Yes, we have a vacancy for a kitchen hand, and we need someone presentable for front of house.” She looked at me. “Have you done waitressing before?”

“Of course,” I lied. “Golden Pear Restaurant. Skovoroda. Kiev.” After all, what’s so complicated about placing a plate of food on the table?

“Have you got a black skirt and shoes, and a white top?”

“Of course,” I lied again. I never used to lie before I came to England. Now it seems I’m quite skilled at it.

It was agreed that we would start tomorrow, working split shifts from eleven till three, and then six till midnight. The pay was four pounds an hour for kitchen hands and double that for front of house, plus a share of tips and service, meals and accommodation provided. She said it all fast-fast, without looking up at us.

“We don’t need accommodation,” saidAndriy. “We have our own.”

“Well, the pay’s the same, with accommodation or without. Take it or leave it.”

I did a quick calculation in my head.

“We take the job,” I said. “Without the accommodation.”

He got quite moody when I asked to borrow some money to buy the waitressing clothes. “You have to think capitalist,” I said. “See it as an investment.” I promised I’d share my money and my extra tips with him. I’d seen a shop with a big sign in the window saying
SALE 50% reductions
, and I couldn’t wait to have a look. I would go in the morning on the way to work.

When we got back to the caravan, there was a metal barrier with a padlock across the entrance to the site, but that was all right because we weren’t going anywhere. By then, we were starving hungry. Maria had packed a whole feast for us of her peculiar food. She’d even put in some tins of steak for the dog, but Andriy said that was ridiculous and the dog should go and catch some pigeons and sent him off outside, and Andriy ate the dog’s food.

There was an embarrassing moment when I had to go to the toilet, but fortunately it was dark by then. When I had to change into my nightie, that could have been embarrassing too, but Andriy very courteously pretended to be reading one of my books, even though he can’t really read English, and when it was his turn to get undressed I pretended to read the book. But I did sneak a look. Mmm. Yes. Definitely more interesting without the Ukrainian trousers.

I stretched out on the bunk which had been Yola’s, and he crawled onto the bunk that had been Malta’s. We didn’t even fold out the double bed, because that would have meant we were going to sleep together. It was so quiet in the warm enclosed space of the caravan that we could hear each other’s breathing. Then I started to wonder what it would be like to sleep together in the double bed. Because really he has very nice hands. Sun-brown, with golden hairs. And arms. And legs. And he is also very gentlemanly, with good manners, just like Mr Brown, who is always saying please and excuse me and pardon. And I liked the polite way he talked to Emanuel and to Toby McKenzie’s parents, and even to the dog, and the attentive way he listens to people. Including me. OK, I admit he isn’t very educated, but you can see he’s no fool. But is he
the one
? When it’s your first time, you have to get it right.

I lay listening to his breathing and wondering if he was lying awake listening to mine. Just as I was beginning to drift off to sleep, the dog came back and woke us up by barking at the door. Andriy got up to let him in and gave him a drink of water—slurp slurp slurp—and spread the old bit of blanket from the Land Rover down by the door for him to sleep on. The dog fell asleep almost immediately, whistling and snoring very loudly—sss! hrrr! sss! hrrr!—which made us both laugh. After that, I didn’t fall asleep for ages. My heart just wouldn’t slow down. I kept thinking of all the things that had happened to me since I left home, and about him, lying so close in the dark, and wondering what he was thinking.

“Andriy. Are you asleep?”

“No. Are you?”

“No.”

“We’d better try to get some sleep. It’ll be hard work tomorrow.”

“OK.”

In the darkness, I could hear the faraway sound of the city, a restless throbbing hum that is never still, like when you hold a shell to your ear and hear the sound of the sea, even though you know it’s just the blood rushing around inside your own head.

“Andriy. Are you asleep yet?”

“No.”

“Tell me about this Sheffield.”

“You know, this Sheffield is one of the most beautiful cities in England. Maybe in the whole world. But not many people know this.”

“What is it like?”

“It is entirely built of white stone with magnificent domes and towers. And it is set on a hill. So you can see it from a long distance away—it looks as though it is shimmering and glimmering in the light as you approach.”

“Like the Lavra monastery in Kiev?”

“A bit like that, yes. Go to sleep now.”

I AM DOG I AM BAD DOG I RUN MY MAN EATS DOG-FOOD GO RUN CATCH PIGEON HE SAYS I RUN I COME TO MANY-PIGEON PLACE EVERYWHERE PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON I JUMP I CATCH PIGEON I EAT STRINGY MEAT MOUTH FULL OF FEATHERS NO GOOD HERE IS MEAT SMELL GOOD MAN FOOD MAN SITS ON BENCH EATS BREAD WITH MEAT HE PUTS BREAD AND MEAT ON BENCH I JUMP I CATCH I EAT BAD DOG SAYS THE MAN I RUN I AM BAD DOG I AM DOG

Kitchen hand! How have you allowed this to happen, Andriy Palenko? Your definite plan was to drop them both off in London, then go on to Sheffield. Now suddenly you are not just kitchen hand, but kitchen arms, legs, shoulders, back, feet, etc. The feet are the worst. If the floor wasn’t so greasy you could go barefoot. Yes, when you get your first week’s pay, you’ll have to get some of those spacecraft-style trainers.

During the split in their shift they just wandered around the streets, which was not intelligent because by the time the afternoon shift starts their feet are already aching. The heat is intense in the kitchen, and the atmosphere frenetic. Do this! Fetch that! Faster! Faster! All the time your hands are wet and slimy from the strong detergent, your sleeves soaked, your feet skidding on the slippery floor, and each breath taking in a lungful of steam and grease.

The chef, Gilbert, is an Australian, a big beefy man with a terrible temper, but a magician in the kitchen, wielding the big knives, chopping and slicing like a wizard. This cooking business—Andriy had always thought of it as women’s work, but seeing Gilbert go at a piece of meat with a blade, then fling it in a smoking pan with a hiss of burning—that looks quite interesting. Maybe he will even learn something. Gilbert has two assistants who are from Spain—or maybe Colombia—who fly around at Gilbert’s command, and a team of choppers, stirrers and assemblers. And there is Dora, the only woman in the kitchen, who does desserts. Then there are the kitchen hands—himself and Huan—who clear and scrape the plates, wash the dishes, mop up spillages, and hump big sacks of stuff when the others command—really it’s like being a slave with ten masters, of whom Dora, who is maybe Croatian or Montenegran, and no beauty, is the worst.

As the evening wears on there is less shouting from Gilbert and more shrieking from Dora. More dirty plates to clean. More soap and steam. He can already feel an itchy rash developing between his fingers. At least on the coalface you could set your own pace. When Gilbert slips outside for a cigarette the Colombians sometimes let him taste one of the special dishes, but after a while his gut aches as much as the rest of his body, and all he wants is to sit down near the open back door, where occasionally a slight breeze stirs the soupy air.

Sometimes, as the double doors swing open, he catches a glimpse of Irina in the dining room gliding from table to table—she has been put to serving drinks, so she seldom comes into the kitchen. She’s done her hair in two plaits, which makes her look even younger, like a voluptuous schoolgirl in her black and white uniform. You can see the eyes of the men following her as she moves around the room. Who is she smiling at like that? Why is her blouse so low-cut? Why did she find it necessary to buy such a short skirt?

When she bends over to pour a drink you can see…no, not quite. Look at the way that man is staring at her.

Long after the chefs and waiting staff have gone home, the kitchen hands still have to clear up and mop the floor and get everything straight for the next day. Irina waits in the dining room, sitting on one chair with her feet up on another, picking at a dish the Colombians prepared for her.

It is almost one o’clock by the time they can go. The night is still and starry. Andriy breathes in huge gulps of the cool smoke-tainted air until he feels quite dizzy. They still have a good half hour’s walk back to the caravan. He walks, putting one foot in front of the other, like a robot. Robot. The word means ‘work’ in Russian. That’s what he is. A machine that works.

“Not so fast, Andriy.”

He realises she’s struggling to keep up with him.

“Sorry.”

“Look, Andriy. This is for you. I can pay you back what I borrowed.”

She reaches down into the opening of that absurdly low-cut blouse and pulls out a rolled-up twenty-pound note.

“Where did you get this?”

“A man gave it to me. A customer.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. He just did. I was pouring his drink.”

“I saw him staring down into your blouse. You look like a tart in those clothes.”

“No, I don’t. I look like a waitress. Don’t be so stupid, Andriy.”

“Keep your money. I don’t want it.”

“No, you take it. It’s for you. What I borrowed. Why are you being like this?”

“I said I don’t want it.”

He sticks his hands in his pockets, and thrusts his chin down, and they walk on in silence like that. Why is he being like this?

The way that old man looked at me made my skin crawl like maggots. He got out his wallet, took a twenty-pound note and rolled it between his fingers very ostentatiously, then as I leaned forward with his glass he pushed it down inside my bra. I could feel it there all evening, stiff and prickly between my breasts.

The restaurant had been quite busy, with all the tables occupied and a few people waiting by the door, the waiters rushing from table to table trying to keep their cool, and Zita the manageress strutting around showing people to their tables with that lipsticky smile. He was sitting near the window, so probably no one else even noticed. Maybe I should have given it back. But I thought, I’ll never see him again, and I can pay Andriy back straightaway and that’ll make things easier between us. Then Andriy got all moody, and that was the last thing I needed, because I have enough unpleasant thoughts to deal with tonight.

And the most unpleasant is this—that twenty-pound-note man reminded me of my Pappa. Same build. Same rimless glasses. Same old-age-porcupine hair. He was sitting at a table on his own. I stared for a moment, startled by the likeness, then I caught his eye, and quickly looked away. Probably this is how it all started—the business of the twenty-pound note—with that quick exchange of looks. But this is what’s been bothering me—had my Pappa been like that? Making a fool of himself over a young girl, peering into her blouse?

Because the girl Pappa left home for, Svitlana Surokha, is almost the same age as me—in fact she was two years above me at secondary school. She is one of those girls everybody likes, pretty, with fair curly hair like a starlet, and blue eyes and a turned-up nose, always laughing and making jokes about the teachers. Then at Shevchenko University, where Pappa is professor of history, she was one of the Orange Student organisers. And they’d fallen in love. Just like that. That’s what Pappa told Mother, and that’s what Mother told me, crying into the night, using up box after box of tissues, until her nose was all red and her eyes were puffy and squinty like a piglet’s.

Not a pretty sight. Really, no one could blame Pappa for falling out of love with someone so middle-aged and unattractive who nagged at him all the time, and falling in love with someone so young and pretty and full of fun. “Fallen in love”—the pretty blond-haired student activist and the distinguished Ukrainian historian, drawn together by a love of freedom. What could be more romantic than that?

Of course, I felt sorry for Mother, with all her sniffling and soggy tissues. But really, everyone knows it’s a woman’s fault if she can’t keep hold of her man. She just has to try harder. The worst thing was, even Mother knew it, and she did try harder, dyeing her hair and putting on bright pink lipstick and that silly pink scarf. But then she couldn’t stop herself nagging at him in a really humiliating way. “Vanya, don’t you love me just one little bit?” It only made things worse.
I’ll
never make that mistake.

That Mister Twenty Pounds—his appearance reminded me of Pappa—an elderly respectable man, probably with a middle-aged wife and family tucked away somewhere out of sight. But the look in his eyes was the look of Vulk. Hungry eyes.
You like flower…?
Greedy eyes. The way the man watched me was not romantic, it was like a cat watching a mouse, concentrating on its every movement, anticipating the pleasure of catching it.

Had my dear craggy crumpled Pappa looked at Svitlana Surokha in that way? Is that what men are like?

Andriy had his head down and that moody look on his face, and he was walking too fast for me again, but I wasn’t going to ask him to slow down. I wasn’t going to be the first to speak. I didn’t even blame Pappa. I just felt a big empty hole of disappointment in the middle of my heart, not only with Pappa, but with this whole man-woman-romance thing. You go through life waiting for
the one
to come along, kisses by moonlight, eternal love, Mr Brown and his mysterious bulge, faithful beyond the grave; then suddenly you realise that what you’ve been waiting for doesn’t exist after all, and you’ll have to settle for something second-rate. What a let-down.